John Busse, LOOW Site program manger for the Army Corps of Engineers, talks with visitors outside the Niagara Falls Storage Site on Tuesday.

Article
and photo by Terry Duffy

"It's
not necessarily like a park; it may look like a park in some places,
but it's not." So prefaced Dennis Rimer, site superintendent for
the highly secure Niagara Falls Storage Site at the Lake Ontario
Ordnance Works in Lewiston.

Tuesday
morning, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Buffalo District,
government overseers of the 191-acre NFSS facility, hosted a tour of
the site for the LOOW Community Action Council, a local group that
conducts community outreach for the Corps as part of its NFSS cleanup
feasibility study of the Interim Waste Containment Structure, now
under way. Also among the 20 or so on hand were county legislators,
local office representatives of federal elected officials and area
residents.

Visitors,
some for the first time, learned the inner details of the LOOW and
NFSS activity history, from the World War II era to recent times.

They
learned how the various LOOW site structures, many dating back to
WWII-era munitions manufacturing, had been raised over the years. And
how the debris from these, plus highly radioactive wastes from atomic
bomb development that were transported for storage at NFSS, were all
ultimately consolidated into the construction of the 10-acre IWCS, a
temporary cell built in 1986.

But
they also heard words of assurance from LOOW Site Program Manager
John Busse and Rimer regarding the immediate and long-term stability
of the IWCS. "Our mission is to investigate and control
environmental impacts, to make sure nothing is getting outside of the
box," Busse told the group.

They
also had the rare opportunity to enter the cordoned-off facility,
managed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and climb atop
the 10-acre mound.

Busse
told visitors the IWCS has an estimated 25- to 50-year life on its
cap. The structure, comprised of radioactive wastes topped by debris,
more clays and soils, then a grass cap, is enclosed by clay dikes on
its sides, sealed cement floors on portions of the bottom and then
high density clay soils further below.

Buried
deep inside, about 25 feet down from the grass cap, inside the
basement cells of what was once a former water treatment plant series
of buildings on the south end, are found very high level K-65 wastes,
which comprise 95 percent of the radioactivity in the IWCS but just 1
percent of its volume. Also found inside are lower level R-10
residues and soils, more lower level radioactive residues and wastes,
contaminated rubble and wastes from former NFSS structures, tower
soils from a torn-down silo complex, plus a host of other
contaminated soils. Topping it are the aforementioned series of
impervious clays of varying density, soils, six inches of topsoils
and the grass cap.

Both
Busse and Rimer stressed to the group throughout the tour the
continued integrity of the IWCS, a facility that sees constant
maintenance by the Corps. Included among the many protective steps is
heavy watering of the grass atop the cell. "We water the grass
daily," said Rimer.

Also
very extensive, continuous testing of the cell, done by means of
hundreds of ground-level and below-surface monitoring wells. Busse
told the group the Corps has 300 to 400 monitoring wells on the NFSS
proper, many of them surrounding the actual IWCS.

"There's
a lot to do here ... there (have) been a lot of complications on this
site," Rimer said.

Rimer
said the entire IWCS cap also has been physically scanned in the past
for radiation with no detectable leaks. Drainage channels are also
monitored constantly; monitoring is performed both above and below
surface and both stressed nothing is being detected.

"We
have radon detectors surrounding this ... there's nothing getting
out, nothing (radon) beyond background," said Rimer. "Someone
would have to take a bulldozer to actually break into this."

Busse
further demonstrated the safety element to visitors by means of a
Geiger counter as he stood atop the cell. Nothing beyond background
levels of radiation was found. "We're basically seeing nothing
here. It's performing as designed."

Busse
told the group the Corps expects to conclude its NFSS cleanup
feasibility study to determine the IWCS future by 2014 and reach a
record of decision on what to ultimately do with the site by 2016.
"We're trying to figure out what to do next," here, said Busse,
adding that ultimately would depend on the ability of obtaining
federal funding.

Until
then, he stressed the Corps' primary focus remains its diligence on
keeping things in check within the IWCS cell.